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The Business of Making Active Disciples

Each month, we post a series of blogs around a common topic. This month, Laura Cheifetz is curating a series on leadership development. These blog posts are by people who have been developed as leaders and who, in turn, develop leaders. They are insightful and focused. They offer lessons. What does leadership development look like in your own context? What could it be? We invite you to join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter

by Shelley Donaldson

What does leadership development in the church look like to me?

In the fall of 2001, a couple of pastor-mentor-friends convinced me I should work for the Calvin Center just outside of Atlanta, GA. I liked kids and I loved being outside. I was also going through a rough patch with my faith and just happened to be looking for a job while going to college. I needed a paycheck, so I signed up. Looking back now, I realize that at no point would anyone ever have been able to explain to me the 9+ years of leadership development that I would undergo and that would transform how I see the world and interact with God’s creation. I’ve tried really hard to carry these skills with me throughout my ministry since and use them to inform my decision making.

Here’s what I’ve learned: you can’t have good leadership if you aren’t someone who is helping to develop new leaders. Constantly. It’s part of God’s big hamster wheel that we should all find ourselves on. I realized I was running on that wheel after becoming an associate camp director and eventually a solo director where I was hiring college students and helping to create an atmosphere of nurturing new leaders. Good leadership and leadership development keeps going. You can’t just hone your own leadership abilities and be a true leader without being able to share with and impart that leadership onto others because that’s not how the gospel would do it.

I know it’s cliché, but in Matthew 28 we get our fundamental instructions for leadership development: to go and make disciples. When Jesus tells his followers to make disciples, it’s not only to make the world believe, but to believe and act on that belief. Which means, if we are to make disciples, then we’re meant to make active disciples who in turn go on to make more active disciples and so on. We are meant to make leaders who go on to make other leaders and so on. We are meant to keep God’s hamster wheel spinning and we should all be on it in some shape, form or fashion.

Over the years, the idea of leadership development has become something of a hot topic in the church. When I attend conferences or large gatherings, I often hear of special leadership events that a particular event or group is hosting, most often it’s an invite-only event. If your invite-only event is one that is intentional about bringing to the table people who have typically been left in the margins when it comes to leadership, then great. But let’s be honest with ourselves. Most of the time, we see the same groups or individuals at these events and we see the same people leading them. It’s frustrating and its exclusive.

Sure, some really good leadership development is done hosting intentional workshops for a hand-picked, select group of people. But the best leadership development happens when we figure out how to embrace God’s hamster wheel and start developing our leaders (aka disciples) who will bring others onto the wheel, not just the few deemed worthy or because they know the right person with some sway. I’m talking moving beyond the pulpit and chancels and moving into the pews and out into the streets.

Here’s the secret that we don’t want to talk about when it comes to leadership development in the church: like so many other parts of our world, you have to have a foot in the door to be a part of leadership and to get that development. And to get your foot in the door often requires an access to privilege and power that, let’s be honest, we don’t often like to share or give up. We’ve essentially separated making active disciples and developing leaders. And we wonder why the church is shrinking?

I had privilege that helped get me in the doors I needed to walk through to get good leadership development. I wasn’t looking to develop my leadership skills, but I did because of others. I was a young white woman from the suburbs, I had good people looking out for me, and my boss (who turned out to be a close friend for life) was one heck of a mentor who was never afraid to call me out when I did something wrong, tell me no when I’d always heard yes, and refuse to coddle me when I failed and acted immature about it. The leadership development I got from my time at the Calvin Center didn’t just help to create a leader in the church, it helped to create an active disciple. It did that for me and so many others because they weren’t interested in being selective, they were interested in developing each person who walked through those cabin doors because they were in the business of keeping that hamster wheel running and making active disciples to run it.

My leadership development came, in many parts, because of my own privilege. Sure, I was smart, likeable, and had a lot of energy for life and God’s church, I still do. But, there were people who were able to help place me in a position where I could blossom. Which is why the skills I developed in leadership are at the core of who I am, because I can’t take any of it for granted. I was introduced to people who helped shape who I am and my abilities, and I sincerely hope that we can change that model from getting leadership development for those with privilege or those with access, to making sure it’s available to all God’s people, especially the ones with little to no access.

We have to be in the business of making active disciples of everyone, not just the select. Then we’ll be in the business of leadership development that will keep that hamster wheel spinning. It won’t just affect the church, but it will affect the world. The church should be at the forefront of leadership development, it should be at the core of who we are. Which means it can’t be exclusive but intentionally open to everyone. Change the exclusive invites from a “+1” to a “bring all your friends and some random folks as well with you.” Leadership development shouldn’t be for the ones that those in places of power deem worthy, but for those whom God has deemed worthy.


Shelley Donaldson is a candidate for ordained ministry in the PCUSA. She works in Chicago at Fourth Presbyterian Church working with youth and leading missions to Cuba. She is a contributing story writer for WJK’s new book Growing in God’s Love: A Story Bible, as well as the Youth Cartel’s 4 Views on Pastoring LGBTQ Teenagers. She is also a founding member of Creation Lab. You can find her work on her blog, The Travelling Theologian: Traveling with 2 L’s Because I Can.

There’s a Wideness

Each month, we post a series of blogs around a common topic. During August, John Wilkinson is curating a month of blog posts exploring where we are as a church through the lens of the new Presbyterian hymnal, Glory to God — what are we thinking about? how are we worshiping? what matters to us? where are we headed? Join the conversation here, on Facebook, or Twitter!

By Colin Pritchard

The disciples did not choose each other. There is no way they would have chosen each other. Fisherman, zealots, brothers, tax collectors choosing to take this kind of extraordinary, dangerous, spiritually intimate journey together? Nope. In my experience, this just doesn’t happen. People choose the company of people like themselves when the going gets tough and the road is uncertain. Each unique, passionate, and particular, the disciples made for an idiosyncratic group. The brothers had to have moments of family drama. Peter had to drive the others crazy with some frequency. Did Thaddaeus ever say anything ever? Thomas didn’t believe the others even when they told miraculous truths. Scripture lets us know that while they may have invited some of their own number to “come and see,” the disciples did not choose each other.

And yet…they were undeniably and powerfully chosen. They journeyed and witnessed, struggled and served, loved and succeeded together, brought together by the One who changed the boundaries and embodied The Word. They did not choose one another, but each was chosen by Jesus. Not the same, but each essential: all a different part of the body that would go to the ends of the earth sharing love and life, hope and the Holy.

Artwork by Shawna Bowman

Artwork by Shawna Bowman

In these modern days we individuals, seekers and followers of The Way, we the Church, continue to walk an extraordinary, dangerous, spiritually intimate journey together. We are in the privileged place of having heard our names called by Jesus and having chosen his companionship. We are just like the first disciples: needed, blessed by opportunity, gifted in our own ways. We are also just like the first disciples: with different stories and means of employment, different personalities, and certainly plenty of family drama.

We share another thing with the disciples: the road ahead remains uncertain. I am certain of this uncertainty. I am also certain that the efficacy and integrity of our witness will be profoundly impacted by how we choose to walk together. We can retreat from the challenges of broad community and its particularities and limit ourselves to our gifts alone. We can participate in the drama of trying to be just a little more chosen, a little more right, and one step closer to Jesus than our sisters and brothers. Or we can wade through the chaos with our eyes set on the One who has called us all, remembering ours is only to do our part.

I have found that the second verse of the hymn, “There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy” (hymn 435 in the Glory to God Hymnal) can serve as a helpful reminder for us all.

“For the love of God is broader that the measures of the mind”: We love to study and debate and discern, but beyond our prodigious collective intellect, the love of God reigns.

“And the heart of the Eternal is most wonderfully kind”: So kind that the quiet ones and the zealots, the blue collars, white collars, and no collars, the broken families and the unique individuals are all wanted, needed, and guided by Grace. Christ’s kindness is a model for us all.

“If our love were but more faithful, we would gladly trust God’s word”: If we remain deeply grounded in the love of God, then we will know our assurance of both pardon and security, we will compete no more, and we will trust not just the written Word, but also the resurrected living One.

“And our lives reflect thanksgiving for the goodness of our Lord”: Who we are and how we walk together will be a worthy witness to the rest of this world. Friends we may well have not chosen each other, but that doesn’t really matter. What matters is that we’ve each been chosen to walk together.


COlin

Colin Pritchard

Pastor

First Presbyterian Church

Victor, New York